Survival of Literature
...'t qualify for mature literary reading.If rigorous standards are applied,how many of the thousands of novels being brought out in English every year merit reading.A critic like F.R.Leavis dismissed even Fielding as not deserving much of reader's time.By standards as stringent as proposed by Leavis,how many of today's novels will find a place in the list of readable novels? Literary criticism,once so accessible and enlightening,passes over the heads of common and uninitiated readers.One could read Dr Johnson without racking one's brains and would feel mentally stimulated and enriched.But the way literary theory and criticism are presented these days,hardly anybody would like to go to the second page after huffing and puuffing with the first. Should we,then,say that the age of great literature is over?Will we have no more Shakespeares and Tolstoys?It looks likely.Literature one held to be a supreme spiritual and intellectual activity has lost is pristine glory.It will never gain that position aagain.Cinema and T.V. have already displaced literature to a considerable extent.Reading habit has conderably declined.Science and scientists ...